QUITO, Ecuador — For most of Luis García’s adult life, a single name dominated the politics of this tiny Andean country: Rafael Correa, the leftist leader of Ecuador’s so-called citizens’ revolution.

But when Mr. García went to the polls Sunday, Mr. Correa was not on the ballot. Unsatisfied with the options that remained, Mr. García, a 33-year-old musician who first voted for Mr. Correa in 2006, chose to simply scribble over his ballot, rendering it invalid.

“I don’t feel represented now,” he said.

That feeling of malaise among the left has been spreading throughout Latin America as, one by one, a generation of iconic leaders has departed the stage, brought down by death, elections, impeachment or, in Mr. Correa’s case, term limits. They were known by many names, including the New Left, and ruled the length of the continent with big promises and bigger personalities.

Picking up the mantle of the revolutions for which the region became famous in the 1960s and 1970s, these leaders expanded education, increased subsidies for the poor and built roads, highways and hospitals. But they often ran roughshod over those who tried to check their power, from judges to international lenders.

Lenin Moreno, left, the presidential candidate of the governing Alianza País party, and Vice President Jorge Glas of Ecuador greeting supporters at a hotel in Quito before the results of the election on Sunday.CreditRodrigo Buendia/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The following year in Brazil, the leftist Dilma Rousseff was ousted throughimpeachment. Her Workers’ Party now faces numerous corruption allegations, while Ms. Kirchner is defending herself against an indictment on financial charges.

“These are not isolated events; it is a great reversal,” said Gabriela Rivadeneira, the president of Ecuador’s National Assembly, controlled by Mr. Correa’s Alianza País party, which for years rubber-stamped his reforms with few questions asked. “We are now the place that the region is looking at for what comes next.”

Mr. Correa was a larger-than-life and often contradictory figure, an American-educated economist who regularly flipped between the mold of a fiery populist and the pragmatism of a studied technocrat.

By most accounts, poverty and inequality decreased in Ecuador as Mr. Correa funneled oil revenue into everything from raising the salaries of teachers to rebuilding the country’s highways and expanding clinics into the Amazon region. It helped that the price of oil was more than $100 per barrel for some of his tenure. Wealth flowed into the capital, Quito, whose streets bustle with new cars and S.U.V.s as workers dig a vast new metro system below.

Mr. Correa also pulled his tiny country onto the international stage, echoing Mr. Castro from an earlier time by railing against capitalism and globalization. In 2012, he granted Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, protection at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, a thumb in the eye of the United States. Mr. Assange remains there today.

But whether Ecuador’s leftist agenda will continue when Mr. Correa leaves office is unclear. There is the question of oil revenue, for one.

As in Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, the social programs in Ecuador that lifted millions out of poverty were underwritten by a commodities boom that sputtered out years ago. Government revenue, around $25 billion a year when oil prices spiked, has now shrunk to less than half that, $11 billion, mainly because of the declining price of oil.

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President Rafael Correa of Ecuador casting his ballots in Quito on Sunday.CreditDolores Ochoa/Associated Press

That has left the country heavily indebted to China. Ecuador’s economy ground to a halt last year after growing, on average, 4 percent or more from 2006 to 2014.

“The model has reached its end because the money has run out,” said César Robalino, a conservative banker at the Pichincha College of Economists in Quito.

Mr. Robalino said Ecuador’s next president, regardless of political affiliation, would need to take a tougher line on spending, reduce the number of government workers and cut subsidies like the ones used to reduce gas prices for all Ecuadoreans.

That is the stance championed by the conservative opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso, a wealthy banker from Mr. Correa’s hometown, Guayaquil, who finished second in the last election against him in 2013. Mr. Lasso is promising to roll back public spending while eliminating more than a dozen taxes, which would mean the loss of billions of dollars from state coffers.

“What a government should do is facilitate entrepreneurship,” Mr. Lasso said in a TV interview during the campaign, adding that he thought Mr. Correa generated too much employment through public-sector jobs.

Lenin Moreno, the leading left-wing candidate, has promised to do more with less, borrowing when necessary. In a response to written questions, Mr. Moreno said that despite the collapse of oil prices, Mr. Correa had avoided cutting social programs and gas subsidies used by the poor. Mr. Moreno said he would continue that policy if the left won.

With about 80 percent of ballots counted on Sunday night, Mr. Moreno, 63, a former deputy of Mr. Correa, was leading with 38.8 percent, just more than a point short of the threshold needed to avoid a second round in April. Analysts said that if the numbers held, they would create an opening for Mr. Lasso, who was in second place, to unite his and the remaining opposition votes and potentially capture the presidency.

If Mr. Moreno wins, he will face the challenge of setting himself apart from his predecessor and his legacy. Mr. Correa has said he will move to Belgium after his term ends, but some argue that if the left remains in power, Mr. Correa will try to influence politics from behind the scenes.

“‘I command, I direct,’ is how he thinks,” said Jorge León, a political scientist at the Central University of Ecuador.

Mr. León pointed to an authoritarian streak in Mr. Correa that also became a hallmark of leftists in several other South American countries. After changing the Constitution — a move that allowed him to be re-elected twice — the president proposed allowing himself to run for a fourth time. (He backtracked when it became clear that popular opinion was against him.)

Mr. Correa also tried to make life difficult for his critics during his time in office. He sued journalists, toughened defamation laws and even took over TV channels whose owners criticized him. More recently, he tried to close an environmental group that was stirring up opposition to a planned copper mine in the Amazon.

It will be up to Mr. Correa’s successor to decide whether to build on his legacy or reverse it. But those who have tried to forge a different path in the region have faced troubles.

President Mauricio Macri of Argentina, despite his vow to revive the country’s economy with market-oriented policies, has had trouble attracting investment to his country, noted Franklin Ramírez, a professor at the Latin American Social Sciences Institute in Quito. Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, has been dogged by corruption allegations similar to those that brought down leftists.

“It’s a little early to speak of the end of a cycle here” for the left, Mr. Ramírez said. “The hegemony of the left has ended,” he said, but added that it was not clear what would replace it.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Ecuador Votes as Latin America’s Left Sags, a Generation of Icons Gone. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe